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J U N E 2 0 0 4 Alumni News
Editors: Jeanne Johnson, Philip Tang, A&S '95 | |
For more alumni info visit alumni.jhu.edu
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Juliette Rossant, A&S '84 (MA) Juliette Rossant was fired upon in an Azeri rescue helicopter over war-torn Azerbaijan. She witnessed firsthand an attack on the Russian White House during a failed coup in 1993. As a journalist, she has covered politics, business, and travel. But it was her love of food and the growing phenomenon of celebrity chefs that inspired her to write Super Chef (Simon & Schuster, 2004), her new book about six culinary superstars — think Wolfgang Puck and Charlie Palmer — and the making of their restaurant empires.
Growing up, Rossant had "early experiences with good food."
Family trips to Guatemala, Italy, and France broadened her
palate. And her parents encouraged experimentation with new
foods by creating competition between their children. "Who
will try the saut�ed fungus first?" she remembers them
asking. |
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![]() In 1987, Rossant's interest in archaeology took her to Turkey, where she initially taught English to high school students to pay bills. Compelled by the economic and political upheaval in the pre-Gulf War Middle East, Rossant became a freelance journalist for several English-language publications in the region. By the end of her first year in Turkey, she had interviewed then-President Turgut �zal, the governor of Turkey's Central Bank, and the British ambassador. Rossant left Istanbul in 1992 and worked in Moscow and Paris for Business Week before returning to New York, where she began reporting for Forbes. There, an editor tapped her to write a new feature on celebrity chefs in the magazine's first annual "Celebrity 100" issue. Rossant, who had written about food and travel for a number of hospitality magazines overseas, realized that her experience in business writing made her uniquely suited to interview such accomplished chefs. "I had the food background to appreciate them as chefs, and I also had the business background to appreciate their entrepreneurship," she says. "Just imagine talking to someone who hasn't gone to school since 14, yet has become a brilliant chef — and who then discovers that he or she has tremendous business savvy," says Rossant."That's Wolfgang Puck's story, and you'll find similar ones for Charlie Palmer, Mary Sue Milliken, Susan Feniger, Todd English, and Tom Colicchio." Rossant spent two to three months shadowing each chef. Over time, she developed a "culinary" approach to writing her book: "I arranged each profile chapter as much as I could as an appetizer, main course, and dessert — a snapshot event, their adventure stories, and a final snapshot event or interview." Rossant's research gave her access to the chefs' inner circles. "The best chefs surround themselves with the best people," she says, recounting scores of other VIPs — from top Hollywood talent agents to business managers for Michael Jordan and Andre Agassi to architects, interior designers, bankers, lawyers, and doctors — that she interviewed in the process. "The food business is very personal," she explains. "That's why I settled on personal profiles that chronicled exciting business adventures rather than focusing on dry business issues." The author relied heavily on her own family and friends during the process, managing to both write her book and care for her newborn son. Sometimes, she did both: "My son was a great litmus test for interviewees. I took him whenever possible to face-to-face interviews, especially a first interview with a chef. Watching any adult react to a child is a revelation in character." Rossant is helping her son develop his own sense of taste. "He ate his first adult lunch and dinner in fine dining restaurants, all in one glorious day in Northern California: cranberry sorbet from Michael Mina at Aqua in San Francisco and a lamb bric at Charlie Palmer's Dry Creek Kitchen in Healdsburg."
In fact, Rossant's desire to feed her son only "healthy,
great food" has inspired some ideas for future books. "Food
is at times hardly separable from nurturing, and being a
mother is the most important thing to me — a great
strength now in my writing."
Julie Smiddy, A&S '79 Some people might call Julie Smiddy a stay-at-home mom. But she actually home schools her eight children so that no one in the family, including her, has to stay at home — or any other particular place, for that matter. Though home-based, she wants to offer her children the freedom to learn at their own pace, without being tied to constrictive locations or schedules. After 15 years of home schooling, she says, "I don't regret even a day of it."
The former Julie Fradel got to know her husband, William
Smiddy, A&S '80, Med '83, when they both joined the Hopkins
swim team in 1976; they married in December of 1978. |
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![]() After graduating, she worked as a medical administrator for the Army, fulfilling her ROTC scholarship commitment. When kids came along, she and William decided on home schooling because the structured schedule of a regular school would prevent the children from spending much time with their father, an ophthalmologist and researcher who often travels to present research at conferences. There were religious reasons as well. "My top priority in bringing up my children is that they share our beliefs as Christians," says Smiddy. "I want them to have strong moral values, and I believe my husband and I are best equipped to pass these standards on to our children." Their oldest son, Robert, 20, attends Florida International University. Because of the flexibility of home schooling, he was able to earn all of the credit hours necessary for a music degree before he even earned his high school diploma. Like each of the Smiddy children, Robert had an education custom-designed by his parents to accommodate his interests, which include working alongside his father to conduct ophthalmology research.
"It's a constant process of evaluation," says Julie Smiddy.
"I consider each child's strengths, weaknesses, and
interests." Smiddy was a natural science major at Hopkins,
and she credits her Hopkins education with helping to
refine her approach to education. "Hopkins taught me to
think at a higher level," she says. "And that's what I want
to pass on to my children — the idea that they don't
have to think like everyone else."
This unsparing, despairing account, written by the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, finds democracy ever in deficit to big bucks. The enormity and venality of all candidates' fund-raising engenders an unrequited need to read of some balancing selfless act.
After evaluating 2,000 such patients in Baltimore, Dr. Muller has written up 26 contributions to pathography — often riveting "stories about what it means to be ill." Drugs figure large, as does chicanery in quest of a free bed.
A tax consultant and titan of tuition details all that is
needed and newly available to lay in funds to educate a
generation that faces unprecedented outlays for a degree of
protection against being dummies.
Nelson Tang, A&S '90 On a spring day in Beltsville, Maryland, the Secret Service practices several threatening scenarios in a movie set-like town. A presidential limousine, several black Suburbans, a black van, and clusters of serious-looking people in dark clothes and sunglasses all wait to undergo a simulated attack on a presidential motorcade. A pyrotechnics expert with Disney movie-making experience will simulate rocket explosions, while a camera crew films it all for a National Geographic documentary.
"It looks like we get to blow something up today," says
Nelson Tang, medical director of the U.S. Secret Service
and director of Johns Hopkins' Division of Special
Operations in the
Department of Emergency Medicine. As the motorcade
approaches, a loud explosion sends flames, smoke, and heat
billowing into the air. Following carefully practiced
protocols, the limousine carrying the "protectee" speeds
off safely. |
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![]() He also travels overseas to provide medical care for past presidents or other officials in places such as Africa or Southeast Asia — former President Jimmy Carter is the most frequent flier — and supervises the medical care of agents who are assigned to domestic events, such as the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. It's a fitting role for someone who, as he puts it, "likes planning and being in strange and unusual environments. "Besides medicine, I've had a lifelong interest in law enforcement," Tang explains. "Here, I get to do both."
After graduating from Hopkins with a biology degree in
1990, Tang attended medical school at New York University
and returned to Hopkins in 1994 for his emergency medicine
residency. He was named chief resident and has occasionally
served as a consultant for films such as Enemy of the
State and the television series Homicide. In
1997, Tang joined the Johns Hopkins Hospital's emergency
medicine faculty, where he became the disaster control
physician and also medical director of the LIFELINE
Critical Care Transport Program, which transports
critically ill patients to and from Hopkins via ambulance,
helicopter, and jet aircraft. |
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![]() Because of the Hopkins/Secret Service collaboration, other Hopkins physicians sometimes join medical teams headed by Tang for special Secret Service trips and events. Next on his agenda? Tang will provide medical support for the Secret Service during the G8 Summit in Sea Island, Georgia, this month. So when President George W. Bush and leaders from the world's other leading industrial democracies arrive, Tang and his Secret Service colleagues will be on hand to make sure all are safe and sound. —JJ
Kevin Kilner, A&S '80
Kevin Kilner, a lacrosse player turned acclaimed Broadway
and Hollywood actor, hasn't sung since a sixth-grade
performance of The Wind in the Willows. Yet he has
agreed to undertake three months of singing lessons,
interrupt his work schedule in Los Angeles, and drive
cross-country to star in a summertime production of Gilbert
and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, all because
of friendships forged in Hopkins lacrosse. |
![]() Photo by Craig Terkowitz |
![]() Kilner was a defensive midfielder on the Ciccarone-coached teams of 1978-80, which won three straight NCAA championships. While a lacrosse player, he kept his acting aspirations to himself, but after a brief career in banking, he deposited himself into the theater in 1985.
Kilner won rave reviews playing The Gentleman Caller
alongside Calista Flockhart and Julie Harris in the 50th
anniversary Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie
in 1994; starred in the CBS sitcom Almost Perfect
and the sci-fi series Earth, The Final Conflict; and
created the role of Tom in Donald Margulies' Pulitzer
Prize-winning play, Dinner with Friends, in 2000.
Kilner's wife, actress Jordan Baker, created the role of
"C" in Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Three
Tall Women. |
"Playing lacrosse for Henry Ciccarone ws the best class I ever took at Johns Hopkins," says Kilner. |
Former lacrosse managers and players came together in
Pirates to honor their former coach. Team manager
Brian S. Goodman, A&S '79, now a Baltimore lawyer, has
managed the Young Vic since he was a Hopkins student. It
was he who introduced both Ciccarone and Kilner to Gilbert
and Sullivan musicals; five years ago, when Kilner was a
celebrity guest at a Ciccarone Center fund-raiser, Goodman
began lobbying him to consider playing the Pirate King. The
recruitment strategy worked: Kilner will take the stage in
early July in the 400-seat theater of Baltimore's Bryn Mawr
School. Another Hopkins alumnus, Roger S. Blumenthal, A&S '81, will take part in the fund-raiser as well. Blumenthal is a physician who now directs the Ciccarone Center, which is dedicated to the global assessment of all the factors contributing to heart disease. "I'm very proud that the name 'Ciccarone' is attached to the cardiology research our group supports around the world," says Blumenthal. As he prepares to become the Pirate King, Kilner recalls Chic's "incredible generosity" toward his players and friends. "He never, ever hesitated to help somebody," he says. "Chic taught me the important life lesson that any young person needs to learn. He told his players that however you envision achieving your goals, your life is most assuredly going to turn out completely differently-and you either make a choice to hang in there and adapt, or you don't.
"Playing lacrosse for Henry Ciccarone was the best class I
ever took at Johns Hopkins," Kilner continues. "The best
life lessons come from people you admire, and I could not
have been surrounded by a more talented, more interesting,
more driven, and generous group of people than the Hopkins
lacrosse community — and the Hopkins community
itself."
_________________
The Johns Hopkins Phoebe R. Berman
Bioethics Institute In February, South Korean scientists announced that they had successfully cloned 30 human embryos. Now that the genies are out of the bottle the cloning issue takes on new urgency. Human cloning is the latest in a series of issues where scientific capabilities outpace society's ability to form a moral consensus. The Johns Hopkins Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute promotes moral reflection and discussion of emerging bioethical issues among scientists, scholars, citizens, and students. Formed in 1995, the Institute studies the hard questions: How do we balance privacy against the use of medical information to advance research? Should organs be harvested from people who are not yet brain dead, but who have no prospect of regaining cognitive function? To what degree should we be able to "pick our progeny"? How do we safeguard human beings taking part in scientific experiments?
Jeanne Johnson talked with Alex Levi, a New York-based
clinical psychologist and University trustee, who chairs
the Bioethics Institute's Knowledge for the World capital
campaign. |
![]() Photo illustration by Kathy Vitarelli |
![]() It's fascinating and futuristic. When my family was looking for a way to memorialize my father, Robert Levi, who died in 1995, supporting the Bioethics Institute seemed a perfect way to honor him. He was a visionary who was deeply invested in anticipating future developments and making the tough decisions. As a clinical psychologist, I sometimes work with people who are in the last stages of their lives, so I was already helping people make difficult decisions about the nature and circumstances of their deaths. I recently worked with a depressed couple where the wife was in the last stages of cancer, and they faced many agonizing decisions regarding her death and hospice care. With medical science and technology having such an ability to extend life, families need to confront end-of-life decisions. Many are ill-prepared to do that. Why is the Institute important to have at Hopkins? As a premier medical school, hospital, and research center, Johns Hopkins occupies the front lines of the very areas of discovery and compassionate care that give rise to bioethical dilemmas. What is informed consent? What are the parameters of ethical research? Both theoretically and in a practical sense, Hopkins faces questions that aren't easily answered every day. Through the Institute, Hopkins has a forum for addressing these issues in a way that can also help shape public policy. We already see congressional bills on issues such as stem cell research and we want to make sure decisions are based upon the best facts and moral reflection. We don't take corporate positions, but we want our staff and students to conduct research, expand the knowledge base, and compile facts so that we can think clearly about bioethical issues. As a community and as a country, we need to form a consensus or at least start talking about ethical issues, particularly if we're going to avoid further splitting society over the morality of scientific and medical decisions. One danger is living in some kind of wild, brave new world where anything goes. The other extreme is trying to turn back the clock and miss out on enormous benefits from biomedical science and technology. How will a successful campaign benefit the Bioethics Institute? As the new kid on the block, we need to catch up in funding. We need to raise $7 million more to meet our $21 million goal for endowment to support a faculty professorship in arts and sciences as well as additional professorships in affiliated divisions of nursing, public health, and medicine. We need $3 million more for program support, including funds for faculty innovation and research breakthroughs. We also need a physical home. We have plans for a building on the East Baltimore campus behind the nursing building, but we need a way to pay for the $8 million structure. There's enormous interest in bioethics, and this important work holds tremendous implications for the future. We want Hopkins to be the place from which the best decisions emerge. To learn about the Institute, call 410-516-0415.
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![]() As it turns out, he was just busy. His explanation? "I really don't have one," says Kun. "Time just flew." Actually, the former Baltimore lawyer was busy practicing in Atlanta and then in Los Angeles, where he is a partner in the law firm of Jackson Lewis. He had been writing short stories that appeared in Other Voices, Fiction, StoryQuarterly, and Cottonwood, among other periodicals.
Kun wrote The Locklear Letters as a break from his other books and projects during a week's vacation. "I had heard that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in a week and I just wanted to see if I could do it," he says. "Basically, I just sat down and made myself laugh for a week."
And from all indications, he will live long and prosper. —JJ
A Sampling of Upcoming Alumni Events
Baltimore Chapter
Cincinnati & Cleveland Chapters
Denver Chapter
Georgia Chapter
Los Angeles Chapter
New England Chapter
New York Metro Chapter
Philadelphia Chapter
Pittsburgh Chapter
St. Louis Chapter
San Francisco Chapter
Washington, D.C. Chapter
California Alumni Tip the Admission Scales
The increase is not a fluke. California alumni played a pivotal role in creating more interest in Hopkins among the state's college-bound students. "We have always had a dedicated group of alumni admissions volunteers in California," says Kim Vickers, associate director of admissions and alumni relations. "But this year they went above and beyond in supporting our admissions efforts in the state." During this year's admission process, 748 prospective student interviews were conducted across the country. Of those, 20 percent were in California. In addition, one quarter of all college fairs staffed by Johns Hopkins alumni were held in California. Says Vickers, "This created more visibility for Hopkins in California than any other state." California alumni volunteers are part of a program called the National Alumni Schools Committee (NASC), administered by the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and the Alumni Association. Established in the 1960s, the NASC has more than 1,000 members worldwide who assist in the annual admissions process by interviewing prospective students and meeting them at college fairs and receptions. Alumni participation at recruiting events has proven a great way to build interest in Johns Hopkins among students across the country. NASC members have many opportunities to become involved during the admission process, and the flexibility of the program allows members to participate as their schedules allow. For more information on joining the NASC, visit nasc.jhu.edu or contact Kim Vickers at [email protected] or 410-516-8953. |
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![]() Phone 443-287-9900 | Fax 443-287-9898 | E-mail [email protected] |